2Clix has withdrawn from a legal case against the founder broadband discussion forum Whirlpool. But it is not necessarily all is well that ends well. The legal question still hangs over Australian public forums as to who takes the legal responsibility for publically posted comments. This grey area still exists in the Australian laws.

Ever since news of 2Clix's legal action against Whirlpool founder Simon Wright first broke, the general opinion has been that it was, at best, a massive miscalculation. 2Clix's suit, which sought to have two threads discussing the effectiveness of its products removed from the site, instead resulted in global publicity of those threads. Those threads still currently dominate the top five search results for '2Clix' on Google, hardly a good outcome if you're seeking to minimise bad publicity. 

Companies that engage in such legal action against negative discussions need to also think about the flip side of the coin. If they can demand that negative comments should be taken down, then what if all of the positive comments go with them.

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We are more frequently questioning how much information should
organizations, especially commercial ones keep on us, and what should
they be allowed to do with it. Adam Ostrow's recent posting "My Soul, and 10 Other Things that Google Owns" on Mashable.com shows just how far Google has you wrapped up in its tentacles.

• Feedburner
• Gmail
• Gchat
• Adsence
• Google Calendar
• Google Checkout
• You Tube and Google Video
• Blogger
• Google Maps
• Gooble Apps

With all of these, Google can cross reference your activities, contacts, purchases and interests. Do we know what Google does with all of this information? No. Can we be assured that our private information won't become exposed, through accident, court order or secret government spying? No.

The likes of Google are banks, banks for information. Just like financial banking institutions it's easy to deposit, harder still to withdraw or gain co-operation.

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